


an ocean in my soul where the waters do not curve

by gleamingandwholeanddeadly (something_safe)



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Angst, Hannibal Lecter - Freeform, Hannibal being his usual creepass self, Hannibal makes it worse before he makes it better, Hannigram - Freeform, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, M/M, Masturbation, Menstrual Sex, Menstruation, Mirror Sex, Psychological Trauma, TW: Parental death, Trans Male Character, Trans Will, Will Graham - Freeform, Will is having a bad brain day, but in a vaguely comforting way, character study maybe, childhood trauma reflection, exploration of gender dysphoria, is this a whump idk, manual sex, questionable sexual hygiene practises from one licky cannibal, recollections, therapy session of sorts, this fic is kind of nasty messy you've been warned, trans baggage, tw: murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-02
Updated: 2020-03-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:00:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22980616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/something_safe/pseuds/gleamingandwholeanddeadly
Summary: Will wakes with stomach cramps and bad dreams haunting his waking hours. Concerned by his absence, Hannibal arrives with dinner, and an unorthodox approach to mending. A story of queer identity, reminiscing, grieving, and healing from trauma.
Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 52
Kudos: 401





	an ocean in my soul where the waters do not curve

**Author's Note:**

> So this is an intensely personal piece - essentially trans therapy/a queer character analysis with a sex scene chaser. I hope you enjoy it, or at least find it illuminating or cathartic in some way. 
> 
> The title is from 'The Ocean', a song by Against Me!
> 
> Warning for possible squick/cringe - outside of all the very dark but canon-typical stuff, Hannibal allegedly does something pretty gross at the end of this fic (nothing non-con or abusive), and frankly if that's not your jam, that is fair enough. You've been warned.

Memories have never had a dusty quality to Will. He hears of the comforting shroud of nostalgia; a honeyed glow around hazy childhood dreams, abstract strokes of scent and sound and feeling like the painting that changes in every light. No reaching fronds of corn for Will, no running through tall grass and climbing trees. His mind does not possess the tools necessary for such self preservation. Every instance is picked out, stored, preserved and jarred in the cold, clinical lab shelves back behind his eyes. The clarity makes it harder to forgive himself and his parents their trespasses. He doesn’t think he’s ever forgotten a face he’s seen, but the vault that contains them grows more and more crowded, a braying sea of soundbites and expressions. 

They visit him in his dreams. The neighbor who called him White Trash, with a straining black comb-over and spittle flecking his chin. His first crush, a girl who had pulled away from him with disgust when he’d given into the desperate desire to smell the corn-blonde waves of her hair. His mother, lying very still in the dark in dad’s bed, her eyes pointed sightless to the ceiling.

Tonight, he’s chilled by the icy breeze that glances off the waves. They’re on a small, craggly rock coast, on an overcast day, seabirds calling in the distance and the sound of the ocean a tinny roar in his ears as he plays at the edge of the water. 

‘Plays’ is an over-exuberant term. He is imagining, and not in joyful fashion. His mind casts shadows in the water: a drowning girl in the waves, her arms frantically breaking the surf and then rolling into the depths once more, her small face pitching among the foaming break. He sees sharks, he thinks, and his peaceful observation of the twisting seaweed vanishes, at once replaced by a single-minded spell to walk into the water; to save the drowning girl. 

First, the water is to his knees, embracing, guiding. And then his waist. A slippery turn of his heel in the silty sand and he’s to his chest, shocked by the cold of it; how fast the water crept up on him. It laps and pulls at his shoulders, and he propels himself forward as best he can with the water tugging at his too big t-shirt. First doggy-paddling and then stroking deeper, his eyes frantically search. As he looks, the sun shoulders through the clouds, casting a searchlight onto the grey water, cleaving it open in flashes of orange and white. The girl again, her eyes wide, her mouth a pink, terrified ‘o’ amid the thrashing fingers of water that pull at her face and dark curls. 

Will, a frantic swell of panic going through him, swims on, desperation turning into blind terror when his feet can no longer hit the sand. The beach behind him is so far now, the girl far away too. 

A harsh, sharp mouthful of salt water chokes him, turning him under the water for a moment with a fickle flick of the current. Will can no longer see the girl, and the icy fear rises, the world narrowing into the paddling of his feet and arms in the silky water. Another wave sloshes over him and he is drowning now, he knows, and he is failing, and the sharks are close, their fins slicing like knife-tips through the surf.

And then his father has him by the back of his shorts, and his fishing oils are filling with water and he’s dragging Will back toward the shore with his teeth bared, wading in great steps, his temper like the shark fins, slicing through his fear. 

Will looks out at the water, bounced by the motions of his father’s gait, and sees that there was never any girl at all. 

He wakes sweat-stained in the muffled light of his living room. The dawn has the quality of a greasy copper penny, breathed green with age. His mouth tastes acidic, saline. 

Still smelling sea air, he wipes his face and catches his breath with a trickling acknowledgement of the distinct uneasiness in his belly. There’s a tenderness low down that explains his terrible nostalgic reminiscing. His legs and lower back throb with discomfort. 

As a rule, Will tries not to indulge in self-pity, but occasionally it won’t be ignored. His only balm to it today is the decision to impulse buy new underwear, specifically designed with his problem in mind. No pink packaging or flowers or scented pads, no going on impromptu dashes to the nearest pharmacy with toilet paper stuffed into his boxers, trying to pick the product with the least plastic waste.

After going to the bathroom and cleaning up, he lets the dogs out, standing on the porch with his robe pulled tight around him. With the sun a little higher behind the downy clouds, the sickly green tint has gone, and the landscape out here is cool monochrome. Grey sky, black trees, white grass. It sways and turns before Will in the wind, feathery strands so like an ocean to him for a moment in the pale light that he thinks he hears the distant cries of gulls.

Nearby, Winston barks, and Will holds onto the sound as he pulls his foot the last inch from the doorway of his dreams, closing it over as best he can despite hearing the whistling wind of it, always. 

Dogs fed, coffee on, he calls Quantico and takes a sick day - not unheard of for him, but uncommon. His head of department doesn’t second guess; she knows just from the sound of his voice that he’s not fucking around. 

That just leaves him to hope that there’s no uninvited contact from Jack Crawford. Ignoring him seldom goes well - last time Will had set his phone to silent on a night, Jack had arrived, grey faced with fury. 

“If I can’t reach you, then what use to me are you?” He’d spat. 

“Maybe you should install a Bat signal,” Will had snapped back. The accompanying agents had cleared the house as if driven out by a flash flood. 

As selfish as it is for Will to wish the psychopaths of the world would take a day off - or at least be unremarkable enough not to invoke Will - the thought persists as he prods around in his fridge for breakfast, mind preoccupied with the very basics of self-care that he can provide himself when he’s in this state. 

He finds English muffins, and eggs, and bacon, and as he sets the great cast iron skillet (his father’s, maybe once his mother’s) onto the hob he’s struck with that familiar feeling of synchronicity again. 

This time it’s not for Garrett Jacob Hobbs, a man who killed his daughter so many times except for the one that counts (Will does not let himself entertain the sickly notion that he reminds him of his own father, he does not) - but Doctor Hannibal Lecter.

Will sees his movements echoed by the ghost of those refined hands, transferring meat to flame, flipping and turning, garnishing with herbs. He’s almost method acting him, he realizes, mincing thyme for his eggs, brushing the little pile into a neat line with his pinky before sweeping it onto his knife and into the skillet. Even the tilt of his head feels more careful, a line of thread holding his spine straighter, making him move with a wire of tension as he serves up. 

_ Ever feel abandoned, Will? _ He had asked, his voice incising like the scalpel Will notices him favoring. 

The thought makes him sneer, breaking character: Will is the one who does the abandoning around here. 

All he was ever good at was running, and he still is now. Endless fresh starts; desertion of accountability. He’ll reel out the story,  _ I followed my father around for years _ , and up to a point it’s true. But after a time it became a new story:  _ I didn’t stop running even when I could get away from him. Fresh starts are all I know how to do. _

He’s only just growing out of the nomadic lifestyle he first kept up as a young man. New Orleans had been big enough to cater to his needs to move apartments every twelve months. He had lived in increasingly stranger places, from houseboats to garage conversions to ramshackle swamp sheds down by the lakes. Will has always been good at hiding: he can’t think of a single person from his former life he had entrusted with a forwarding address, not any living, anyway. The disappearing man, his old partner had joked. He really had no idea, Will reflects now.

Buying the house in Wolf Trap had been a big consideration when he moved to Maryland: to this life, at Quantico, and now putting his nose in the dirt and sniffing out madness for Jack. It had suddenly felt so necessary, the dirt road around like a moat of black, still water, a means of escape in and of itself. Its small, self-contained sturdiness had stood out to Will like one of those cabins: there is only room in here for me, everyone else is only a guest. 

Sitting at the table with his plate, he glances up at the ceiling at the thought - the upstairs all but cordoned off now - and then to his camper bed. Reluctantly, he acknowledges that he’s become a guest, too.

_ “You think this is some kind of fucking hotel?”  _ Echoes the voice of his father. Will curls his lip, and applies salt to his eggs with purposeful fervor, scattering the grains across the table top simply because he can.

Buster sits hopefully on his foot as he eats, the others employing a modicum more restraint and merely loitering on the very edges of their beds, despite having eaten already. With a glance over at them, and a click of his fingers to send Buster back to his own cushion, he starts to eat. The thyme was a good idea. 

After breakfast, Will picks up the phone and dials Doctor Lecter’s office, listening to the polite answering machine message with something verging on amusement. 

_ “You’ve reached Doctor Lecter, I am currently in session and unable to take your call. If you require a call back, kindly leave your contact details and I’ll be in touch at my earliest convenience. Thank you.” _

“Doctor Lecter, it’s Will Graham,” he tells the answering machine, “I’m sorry for the short notice, but I won’t be able to make my session tonight. Stomach bug. Don’t want you to catch it. Thanks.”

He hangs up, and switches his phone to ‘Do Not Disturb’, only mildly irked by the lie. He does feel ill, he reasons, and too vulnerable to be prodded and nudged by the Doctor’s gentle questions today. He might usually be more inclined to wade through, but something tells him it wouldn’t be a good idea. 

The dream has him rattled, he thinks, as he goes to shower up and take his meds. He hasn’t thought about it for a long time, the drowning girl, nor the fury in his father’s face as he’d snatched him back onto the sand. Water has always frightened Will, but it has been his haven, too, and when it counted, it was his savior. Now, he feels further away from it than ever. 

_ I wonder… _

The morning is given over to weariness. Will holes up on the sofa and tries to do some marking for his classes until the ache is persistent enough to force him up, his mind churning uneasily all the while, memories plaguing him. He thinks of his mother, who he only recognized by the photo on the dresser. He thinks of the water damage on the bottom right hand corner. He thinks of her lying in the dark, staring at the ceiling, her clothes all askew. 

He adds a glug of bourbon to his coffee around noon to calm his nerves, and then rummages under his bed until he finds a rubber heating bottle, filling it carefully with hot water and wrapping it in a scarf. Carrying it back to the couch and sitting it in his lap, he carries on flipping through papers. 

He drinks several more cups of plain coffee, and takes more pain relief when it’s time. Finally, he can’t indulge himself any longer, and he puts aside his last report and forces himself from under the Afghan on the couch, stiff with pain before he manages to shake it off a little.

Taking the dogs for a walk in the late afternoon helps him feel a little less sluggish but he’s still nagged by the discomfort as he weaves between the pines fringing the property, heading without any real purpose toward the stream as though magnetized. It’s cool and brisk, a light mist tendriling between the trees and gliding over the fields. Will’s breath clouds like escaping ghosts as he puffs against the chill in his lungs. The grass ripples like the surface of the ocean.

He sits across from his father in the little motorboat, one hand on the tiller, his father’s on his mother’s hair. The mist wreathes them in the silent dawn. 

Zoe the dog nearly legs Will up in the throes of his distraction, and he shakes his head again to clear it, raising hands to a couple of wet noses.

“I’m all right,” he assures the pack, though Winston seems dubious. The others fan out, milling around in the cool blue shadow of the trees, occasionally gifting him with pine cones or sticks to throw; a ball that must have been lost on another trip, now triumphantly found. 

Will lets his mood be alleviated by them, wet noses and wagging tails and their nonjudgmental affection. His little pack of misfits, he thinks with hard-won pleasure, mind skimming over each instance of the moment he had decided they were his: Max, a Bernese mix, and possibly-a-hint-of-German-shepherd Jack, had been dumped at the farmhouse in the night when Will first moved here. They were starved skinny and skittish, and now both gently herd the others, completely confident once more. 

Harley, vaguely bulldog shaped, trots along behind them. She was the pet of a victim from one of Will’s first crime scenes in his brief stint working homicide in Baltimore before he joined the academy. She had tried to savage the madman who had savaged her owner, and her vet bills had taken most of Will’s savings, but he deems it more than worth it, watching her zig-zag through the tall grass, tail going ten to the dozen. 

His smaller, fluffier acquisitions, Ellie and Zoe, had been shelter dogs that Alana had pointed out to Will on the page of a kill-shelter on Facebook as ‘last-chancers’. He’s never liked the idea that anything living could be considered a ‘last-chancer’ simply for existing. Zoe had been given up by her owners after a diagnosis of diabetes, and Ellie had huddled close to her in their enclosure in the shelter when she had cried all night. Will saw no reason to separate them. 

Buster interrupts his musing with a high-pitched yap, almost lost in the tall, reedy grass.

“Yeah, I’m getting to you,” Will mutters, bending down to give him a quick ruffle. He recalls his phone ringing, but strangely, he doesn’t remember the words exchanged, only that it was a lawyer, informing him that his teenage friend Bobbi had left Buster to Will after her death. Will hadn’t even known Bobbi was sick - nor that back home, if you died of what Bobbi had, there was still a good chance your own parents wouldn’t come to your funeral. 

He recalls sitting on the front row in the chapel, one of six people who had attended the service, looking at his old friend’s face, now a stranger, and wondering if this was what faith had in store for him, too. For a moment, her face still and calm and pretty even without makeup, Will remembers imagining he saw Bobbi’s eyes open - staring at the ceiling, her clothes all askew. 

Bobbi’s folks had instructed her to be buried in a suit. Will still wishes all the time that they had been there - that he had been brave enough to find them, and… well, they weren’t.

The little girl in Will’s ocean dips out of view again. 

He’d gotten up at three in the morning to drive to Biloxi, been to the service, collected Buster, and started home that afternoon. He didn’t get home for another day and a half. He’d stopped in a motel for a few hours’ sleep and held Buster and cried like a child for the grief of not only losing, but also having let Bobbi down. He remembers the mustard walls of the hotel room, and the way it had smelled of pot and mold, and that Buster had made noises like he was crying too while he’d huddled against Will’s chest. 

Loss has always been intimately, awfully familiar to Will. The nature of his brain, and his work, demands it, even when he feels like a tourist, rubbernecking on other people’s horror.

He’s had to find his peace with protecting himself in whatever ways he can, and if those ways are by only loving those he knows won’t desert him, well. It’s not entirely functional, but it works. 

A couple of the dogs bark at him now, like they can hear his ruminating, and he shakes off the mist of his mind again, and looks down at his little herd and whistles the ‘home’ signal: it’s getting colder and gloomier with the approaching evening.

Winston’s damp nose touches his hand in a cool shock. He’s Will’s most recent acquisition. He’s still warming up to Will, finding his place, but he checks in frequently enough that Will thinks he’s starting to settle down. 

“You’re okay,” he tells him gently, but he’s not sure that it’s just Winston he’s reassuring.

The oldest of his brood, Zoe is starting to lag behind the others, so Will backtracks and scoops her up, walking with her in his arms as they circle back toward the house. The thought of anything happening to any of them wounds him today, the same lingering melancholy that lies in wait for him constantly, concealed in the shadows of his mind, reinforced and made harrowing by his work. He’s still afraid of answering the phone.

Back at the house, he’s surprised and a little harried to see the stately, smooth form of a familiar Bentley hunkered on the drive like a stag beetle, its previous occupant waiting on the porch. 

Hannibal looks just as stately and smooth as his car, a cardinal flash in rust browns and deep ox-bloods that bring out his eyes. He dips his chin to Will in greeting as he comes up the steps with Zoe in his arms, the rest of the dogs hanging back to bark their warnings until Will hushes them.

“Something wrong?”

“With me? No, Will.”

“You got my message?”

“I did.”

“So why’re you here?”

Expression perfectly pleasant, Hannibal gestures to a cool bag on the chair by the door.

“I thought a little nourishment wouldn’t go amiss, if you were feeling unwell.”

“I could have had my face super-glued to the toilet seat, Doctor, I wasn’t exactly feeling up to company.”

“Then I will leave you to it. Regardless, I wanted to check in, after I couldn’t get you back on the phone.”

Will tries to find himself irritated and only half manages it, gently ushering Hannibal out of the way of the door and moving to unlock it, depositing Zoe inside. He feels unwashed and under-dressed in his sweatpants, no socks underneath his Hunters. Hannibal looks as though he’s stepped out of an elegant soirée, three piece suit and polished Oxfords resplendent in the gloom. It’s almost a chafe to Will’s own robust ego, how good he looks.

“Come in for a cup of coffee, at least,” he mutters, and pretends not to be warmed by the bright smile Hannibal gives him in turn. 

“A traditional  _ bouillabaisse _ , a fragrant base of saffron and fennel, with assorted  _ fruits de la mer _ and my homemade  _ pain de campagne.  _ _ Bon Appétit. _ _ ”  _ Hannibal places the two bowls down reverently on Will’s scutched kitchen table, expression suffused with pleasure when Will immediately bends to smell the soup. The dogs watch them from their beds nearby, subdued by the space heater and Will’s word.

“This looks… incredible,” he says, honestly. He doesn’t know much about technical cooking, nor traditional French, but Will knows that this is at least a few hours’ work. That stirs a curiosity in him. “No office hours today?”

“Two clients this morning, but the rest have been rearranged.” He dips his soup spoon daintily into the broth and takes a mouthful, so Will busies himself doing the same while he digests that. 

“Rearranged… so you could make me soup?” He hazards, and then cuts himself off. “God, this is delicious - what’s the white fish?”

“Snapper,” Hannibal supplies, mouth tucked into a near-smile, like it’s a private joke. “And not quite - my third client was running late due to unforeseen circumstances and so we rescheduled, then I had administrative work to attend to, but with your absence it made little sense to stay.”

“Sorry,” Will says, feeling both admonished and strangely sought out at once. His ears are pink at the thought of it. Special treatment, the kind he shies from and seeks out at once. He doubts Hannibal does it consciously, and Will is bitterly aware of how badly he craves these displays. Now that one has been presented, he doesn’t know what to do with it.

“There is no need to apologize, I am aware that sometimes life throws us unexpected obstacles, some more difficult to overcome than others.”

“You can say that again,” Will says dryly, ripping into some bread and eating it with relish. He can feel Hannibal’s eyes on him, but he seems merely pleased, and so Will lets it linger. 

“You seem to have found your appetite again,” Hannibal remarks, without acid.

Even so, Will slows, apologetic once more. “It’s really good.”

“I’m pleased to hear it.” Hannibal brought a crisp, bright chenin blanc with him that he whirls under his nose now before he takes a sip, cleansing his palate. “Though I get the distinct impression, if it’s not too bold to say, Will, that today you are hiding.”

Will feels as if he’s stepped into a snare, and he can’t quite curb his defensiveness now.

“Evidently not well enough.”

“Those who are determined to find, do so by any means necessary,” Hannibal counters. “Hiding and disguise is a recurring theme in many of the Greek epics. Heroes are often discovered by those who need them, just in the nick of time.”

“It’s not only heroes who use disguise as a means of deception,” Will says dryly, taking a sip of his own wine. “It sounds like you’re getting at something, Doctor, so why don’t you?”

Perfectly composed, Hannibal uses his fork to delicately skewer the flesh of a mussel, prizing it out of its shell. It’s difficult for Will to look away from him, as always, eyes following the sleek bow of his head as he lifts the morsel to his lips. 

“In Statius’  _ Achilleid _ ,” Hannibal starts, “he tells of Achilles’ time on the island of Skyros, hidden by his mother Thetis to protect him from King Agamemnon’s war and the prophecy of his death. He was disguised as a beautiful young woman, Pyrrha, and only discovered when Odysseus tricked him into revealing himself by threatening the women on the island with violence.” 

Silence rings after the words. Will suddenly feels the creeping heat of fear in the pit of his stomach, and he tries to force it down, feigning nonchalance.

“I’m not in disguise,” he hisses. 

“Not now. You were discovered.”

“I discovered myself. No one else gets to take credit for it.”

“And you emerged glorious, shaking off the imposed vanities of those around you to seek your prophecy in truth. I don’t wish for you to hide your truth from me, Will.”

“Should I call you Odysseus, then?”

“I’d sooner be called Patroclus.”

“I don’t have any armor to lend you.”

“I don’t quite believe that.” 

“And why not?”

Hannibal’s silence as he casts a look around Will’s little fortress is uncomfortably articulate. With a sigh, Will goes back to his dinner. 

“How did you know?”

“I didn’t,” Hannibal muses, “just suspected. Certain scents, certain gestures. Sometimes when we talk about fatherhood, you put your hand on your stomach.”

As startled as Will is by the closeness of the study, the heat in his face isn’t entirely anger. He feels feeble and transparent as jellyfish, but something else too - intensely watched. He has always assumed his study of Hannibal one-sided. Seeing its mutuality has his nerves prickling like hackles raised.

“That’s all?”

“For me. I doubt others would be so observant. I noticed this time last month you cancelled a session, too.” It seems almost querying, like he’s still not  _ certain.  _ “I know I should not necessarily have… confronted you on what I have intuited. I trust you to tell me when I have overstepped.”

“Yeah, it’s a little tacky.” Will doesn’t let him get away without actually apologizing, despite not being genuinely angry. 

“Unfortunately, I value your therapeutic progress too much to feign ignorance. I wanted to give you the opportunity to discuss your problems without cherry-picking what you share.” Hannibal does a good job of looking soft and solicitous. It’s unfortunately very appealing. “Have I offended you?” 

He hasn’t. Anyone else would have. Will curls his lip at himself: he’s got it bad. 

“I figured you would find out eventually. You’ve got a nose for it.”

“It makes me a good psychiatrist,” Hannibal agrees, “but occasionally an unwelcome dinner guest.”

“Well, you could never be that. Maybe for anyone else in my position, you should let them choose when to tell you.”

“I’ll bear that in mind, thank you, Will. I’m sorry for yet another ambush.”

“Beginning to think your ambushes are a good sign. You wouldn’t bother if you didn’t care.”

“Precisely.” Hannibal smiles at him, taking another bite of bread. “Am I at liberty to ask how you feel about this?”

“About you knowing, or about why I cancelled our session?”

“Let’s start with why you cancelled.”

“Some people are lucky enough to escape once they start treatment,” Will starts, dryly. “Luck is not something I readily run across, it seems.” 

“It seems to make you desperately unhappy.”

“It does.” A tight smile at that.

“Then perhaps you’ll forgive me for asking if you’ve considered surgery?”

Another little burst of that loud silence. Will sits back in his chair with his wine, setting his spoon down and breathing through the question.

“I have considered.”

Hannibal waits for him to continue, eyes down. 

“People like me…” Will pauses again, afraid to let the words out for a moment, like they might undo all the work he’s put in. He drinks more wine and tries again. “When you’re like me, even though you always know you’re different, you don’t necessarily know why at first. I think plenty of other people do, but knowing myself has always been… hard for me. Even this identity felt like it might dissolve if it got wet. Turn to sea foam.” He huffs a defensive laugh, but Hannibal stays perfectly attentive and serious. 

“I remember when I was a kid,” Will hesitates again, but the eyes don’t leave him, “I always felt… stranded. Little girls around me were growing into something else, growing graceful and striking, with corn-colored hair and clean fingernails, smelling of sun. They were impersonating their mothers, but I didn’t have a mother. And the little boys were allowed to do what they wanted, and they fished in the bayou and baited ‘gators and searched in the mud for pebbles to skim. I wasn’t allowed that. I coveted the freedom. I wanted everything, I wanted both. I saw boys my age standing on the dock, no shirt, freckled shoulders, fishing for bluegill with their backs and bellies getting brown and no one ever told them to be careful. I wanted to feel  _ easy _ , and not so aware of myself, but I never did.

I made a friend, Bobbi, for a little while. She was a little like me, but not like me at all. We knew we were different, but we were the same kind of different. We watched movies together at her mom’s trailer sometimes - they were her mom’s movies, of course, and there were only a couple. Sometimes if we scrounged together a couple bucks we’d rent one but it was rare.” He’s aware of his accent now, getting rounded as he reminisces. Hannibal is still silently waiting for more. 

“I always remember the church scenes,” Will summarizes, tiredly. 

“Church scenes?”

“Wedding scenes, yknow.” He fidgets a little before he continues, eyes starting to sting no matter how much he fights it. “You see, Doctor, when everyone thinks you’re a little girl, there are certain things that are held up as marks of success. In those scenes, the bride walks down the aisle and her father gives her away, and everyone throws rice and rose petals. That’s all you’re taught to really covet, when people think you’re a little girl. Wearing white, and becoming a - a mother…” He swallows again heavily. “And I didn’t  _ want _ them, but there’s always that part of me that feels like a failure for not having them. I suppose I thought - if I still could, maybe one day I’d be able to fix it. But I couldn’t, I don’t think I’d be able to deal with the - with everything. God, even this sounds like someone else to me. I still don’t know who I am.”

Wiping his eyes, he stands to go and retrieve the bottle of wine, grateful for the next well of silence. He refills his glass; offers it to Hannibal but is politely waved off. When he sits back down, he realizes he’s still wet-eyed, and he makes a subtle effort to knuckle away the last of the tears. 

Hannibal’s eyes, he sees when he looks up, are glazed too. 

“Why couldn’t you? Because of what others would think?”

“Not just that. I can’t imagine finding someone who would want that, and it seems wrong to take it without asking - but it’s selfish too. Having a child seems... to some people, it can seem like altruism. Someone to push your wheelchair around when you get sick. A project instead of a human being, your second draft. Someone who won’t have the same problems you had. The same father you had.” 

He shakes his head. “I can’t do that. I grew up to hate my father because he didn’t know me. He  _ couldn’t _ know me, because I didn’t know myself, but I still resented him so badly.” He takes a few slow breaths, trying to calm himself. “To him, I was always Pyrrha, never Achilles, even with a sword in my hand. I don’t want to see a child as what I want them to be. I see myself doing it now, even with Abigail. I see her as this delicate little project, to fix and cajole along.”

“The nature of nourishing is problem solving. Dehumanizing is sometimes a necessary way of simplifying the problems we face in parenting. You cannot change someone’s thinking, or their natural state - you can only influence their actions.”

“So I have to hope that I am just steering them toward the right prophecy? It seems like rolling a dice on another human being.”

“It’s the same gamble we take with any relationship.”

“But a child isn’t another human being with whom you collide at random,” Will says, desperately now.

“They are, when they are grown. They’re people, Will. You are still your father’s child.”

Will lets it swill around in his mind like the wine in the bottom of his glass, and suddenly, it’s redundant. It’s insignificant through the lens of probability, once more relegated to hypothetical, where it’s safe.

“You’re right. And I know that. And I know Abigail is still her father’s child. But it still raises all this confusion in me, all over again. I’m still my father’s child.”

“Arguably, the confusion is elevated by your dysphoric mentality.”

It feels trite to hear it said aloud, but freeing too: it will stop. This will be over soon. 

Allowing himself to feel the relief, Will nods.

“Exactly. So I go through this all again whenever I’m reminded that I have this ability - and somehow, I still forget about it, every time, because it’s just so far from how I see myself… and then it all comes back, and I can’t outrun it.”

“Like Achilles,” Hannibal offers, “outrunning his prophecy.”

“In the story, he fathers a child,” Will points out.

“And yet in the story, he has a good father.”

“His father raped his mother.”

“A poor man does not make a poor father. Fathering Achilles was his father’s prophecy. Fathering children was not Achilles’ prophecy, dying in glory was. He left his child. Are you afraid you would leave your child, Will?”

It’s a question as sharp as a Roman spear. Will feels it push through his heart. He covers his aching lower stomach with a sigh.

“I’m afraid it would leave me.” Abigail flashes into his mind, with her great doe eyes accusatory and admiring at once.

“You fear loss. We all do. It’s the price of love.” 

“Then why would I love?” Will whispers. He sees the way it lands in Hannibal’s eyes, how it hurts him with its clarity, too. 

“It’s the nature of giving yourself over to love - it’s a gift, in a way. You love someone enough that in their absence, that love turns to anguish. To be willing to submit to that possibility, and to trust it would be mutual, it’s beautiful, don’t you think?”

He has to think about it before he can answer, and it comes out of his mouth like it’s thorned and barbed, scratching the sides. 

“It’s too much to ask.” 

“Too much for someone to ask of you? Or of you to ask of someone else? A child, a lover?”

The words sound entirely too much like a temptation on his lips, like something delicately presented in cupped hands, something sweet and floral.  _ A lover _ . 

“Of me to ask,” Will supplies finally, voice thick. 

“You’re afraid of loving for the wrong reasons, then. Asking for love in return, deserving it. You feel the same way about becoming a father.” 

“At least a lover can’t inherit my flaws.”

“But they can forgive them.”

Will feels the ripples the words make. 

“Sometimes they can’t.”

“The right person will.”

“So I should keep looking?”

“Perhaps in this story, you are the hero. I’ve told you, Will.” Hannibal gives him a soft smile, crinkling the corners of his eyes. “Those who are determined to find, do so by any means necessary.”

“Asking to be found feels like too much, too.”

“You don’t have to ask. Tell me, Will.” Hannibal leans forward in his seat now, and Will  _ feels _ his keenness sharpen anew, sighting fresh bait wriggling on a hook. “Why is it that you fear asking too much? Was it because your father asked too much of you?”

The urge to stand up is sudden, and undeniable. Will’s dinner roils in his stomach as he backs away from the table.

“No.”

“No? Your mind returns to this reeling every month, it drags you back under its current, and it won’t let you up. Something is anchoring you, and you know I can unburden you.”

“We’re not in session, Doctor-Patient confidentiality doesn’t apply in my goddamn living room.”

“It can. Say the word.” He is affecting concern, Will knows. He sees it in the same way he sees his own poor acting reflected in the expressions of his peers’ surprise. As ever, he can’t begrudge him: Hannibal does not seem to feel the same concern for matters of life and death, only hungers for knowledge he has not yet attained. A surgeon through and through, by Will’s experience.

Still, the offer moves something in him. Church scenes. Hot Sundays wearing starched white and socks with lace on the cuffs. Grey from over-washing, actually. Starched greys. Confessional booth that looked to Will like a toilet stall in their run down white washed chapel. Grey washed chapel.

Confess, and God will grant you redemption. Keep your whites white.

“What happened to your parents, Will?” Hannibal prods gently. “What did you do?”

Sweat is starting to gather at the small of Will’s back. His heart makes a frantic effort at escaping his chest, beating against every wall like fists on a door. 

“My mother left when I was small,” he says finally, eyes going unfocused at the thought. “I didn’t know why, and dad never talked about it. She was called Sarah.” In the photo, she had pretty, curly hair, gleaming dark. 

“It must have been lonely, just the two of you.”

“It was what it was.”

“Did your father drink, Will?”

“He couldn’t afford to all the time, not to an alcoholic extent. Every now and again, he’d go on a bender. Sell something and disappear for a few days. It didn’t really happen until I was older and paying board, I guess he had to keep it together until then.”

“Do you blame yourself? Did you think that he saw your mother in you? That your struggles became his struggles?”

“He was hitting the bottle a long time before I was buzzing my hair off and strapping down my chest, Doctor. I barely think he even noticed.” His lip curls at the thought. “He still always called me his girl.”

“So he ignored you. Was that worse than being misunderstood?”

“What do you think?” Will had nearly tanked his own career before it had begun trying to get his attention. Petty theft, altercations, vandalism - tempered only by his own desire to succeed; escape.

“And what broke the cycle?”

This memory is the only one that’s distorted. Will takes it off the shelf now and shakes the specimen jar like a snow globe, examining the mucous flesh inside. 

“My mom came home.”

Will’s eighteenth birthday, Summer vacation time. He’d scored a temporary position at the local police station for work experience. Extra credit for when he applied to colleges, though his grades, his professor had assured him, would cushion that considerably. His days were spent data inputting, digitizing files, eyeballing the flashes of action that blew in as often as rain. Usually he’d go home, make dinner, head upstairs to do homework and then either go out or go to sleep to avoid his father.

“That night, she knocked on the door. There was a moment, when I answered,” Will recalls it carefully now, “where I think maybe she thought she’d… come back just in time, or something.”

“Were you happy to see her?”

“Delighted.” The word squeezes out between bared teeth like it might get cut on the way out. 

“She abandoned you. Did she have reasons?”

“I didn’t have time to ask,” Will says, honestly. “I couldn’t, at first. I just stared at her. She didn’t say much either. She just asked where dad was, and asked me to call him. So I did. Rang around a few bars.” What he does remember is that she didn’t call Will by his name - not even the one she knew him by. She didn’t call him anything at all. 

He swallows at the thought. “Dad came home, and he told me to give them a little time. Gave me…” an inappropriate grin at the thought. “Gave me seven dollars, to go to the store. Seven dollars and a nickel.” 

“How long did that hold you for?”

“Long enough to get a brain freeze from the milkshake I got. The woman in the diner put a candle in my donut.” 

“Strangers made your birthday more special than your own parents.”

Hannibal intuits it so easily that Will feels that creeping sense of shame again, like a child being caught out, too old to play pretend. Though he’s remained still throughout Will’s kinetic, twitching recollections, now he rises, and smoothly comes toward him. 

“What happened next?”

Will stares at him, but he’s seeing his mother again, lay in the bed, her eyes wide open. 

“He said he didn’t mean to,” he says, numb now as he had been then. “Said something about her wanting money, I don’t know. I don’t care. They’d argued, and she’d - I think she came with a gun, I remember there was a hole in the refrigerator. He said he had to.”

“He killed her.”

Will doesn’t know if he’s ever consciously acknowledged that it was homicide. Manslaughter. He knows, in an abstract way, that his father’s actions facilitated his mother’s death. But she had never been there before, and her absence was not keenly felt. Will hadn’t known her, and he has no way of knowing her now. 

Slowly, he nods. 

“And so the thing your father did. The thing that he asked you to do. Is that what was too much? He drove her away, robbed you of the person who might have helped you better understand your coveting, and why you felt so lonely.”

Again, despite his efforts, Will’s eyes fill.

“And when she came back, he killed her.”

“He took her away again. What then? What did he ask of you, Will?”

“You know what he asked me.” He’s never really heard himself sound pleading before. Hannibal becomes a soft shadow as his vision blurs. 

“The lakes? The only solace of your childhood, which you remember so uncomfortably well, it became the backdrop for the dawn of all your nightmares?”

It startles when his warm hands come to rest on Will’s shoulders. He’s so close suddenly, but Will doesn’t flinch from it, instead grateful for the enclosed space between them, fencing in Will’s secrets. 

Will’s voice comes out as barely a murmur when he finally answers. “We took the boat out before the sun was even up. No one saw us. We didn’t know what we were doing. He had a couple of sandbags for the trailer, and he carried her, and I remember that she was - she didn’t move much, she wasn’t limp. Her mouth was purple. He kept telling me I had to help him. That I owed him.”

Dark seems to have drawn in between them, and Hannibal’s eyes are black, just twin slivers of white daylight gleaming on their smoked glass surface.

“And did you help him?” Hannibal whispers. 

For a moment, Will is back in the little motorboat, his father’s hand in his mother’s hair, a strangely intimate gesture. Was killing her intimate? It occurs to Will he could ask. 

The light is made strange by the mist, the water underneath nearly invisible. Will thinks both his parents look blue, the sun starting to rise coral red in the distance, the harshness diffused like watercolor. 

“A bit further,” his father says, peering out into the fog, both of them listening. When he raises his hand, Will cuts the engine, and everything is silent.

Before his father can move, before Will can stop himself, he stands; picks up the emergency oar and swipes as hard as he can. His breaths seem very loud in the pressing walls of the fog. The sun is watching. Will stares at his father’s hand, loose in his mother’s hair. 

Back in his home now. His little fort. Hannibal’s hands grounding him.  _ Come back to me, Will.  _

His lower back aches. His heart aches.

“Thought about throwing them both out. Saying they’d drowned.” He sounds hoarse, the words barely there. 

“What stopped you?”

“I knew it wouldn’t wash. And I didn’t think… he deserved it.”

“To get away with it? A reprieve in death?”

Will nods. His gaze is still unfocused. “I knocked him out, and took us back in. Called the police and told them everything. Once they had him in custody, he… cracked. There was enough evidence in our home to choke a horse.” 

For a moment, he’s lost in simply remembering. Not long after that, he’d gone to college. There had been a hazy period of liminal space in his mind back then, where nothing arrived without procedure, and nothing stayed for long.

“You sent your father to prison. Is he still there?”

“No. He died inside. Natural causes.”

“And do you ever regret your decision? If you could go back to that moment, what would you do now?” A discomfiting darkness in his eyes for a fleeting moment. Anticipation, and a hint of savage pleasure. 

Will’s swallow clicks his throat before he answers. “I’d hit harder.”

“Perhaps, then, it’s good that you outran your prophecy. At least for a while.” The pass of Hannibal’s hand feels over-familiar and completely earned at once, and he leans into it unconsciously. He strokes the sweat-damped curls back from Will’s forehead. “Eroding to nothing in prison would be a dreadful waste of you, Will.”

“Waste not, want not.”

Hannibal’s hand doesn’t drop, combing through the waves of dark hair, calming. It’s a balm to every sandpaper thought in Will’s mind. He turns into it, sighing, helpless for wanting such comfort. Such very careful, capable hands. 

“I have another question for you, Will,” Hannibal breathes, taking Will’s weight as he relaxes into him at the contact, utterly, plainly desirous of the want to do so. “And then I won’t make you speak of it anymore.”

“Mm?”

“You feel your father asked too much, and as such you are leery of the same. You felt he had not earned the right to ask. If he had asked to earn it, would you have let him?” 

“That’s… an unanswerable question. How would he have earned it? What could I have asked him?”

“Put yourself in his shoes. Your actions recently orphaned another man’s daughter. Fathers killing mothers is the theme in this epic. Did you hit harder for Abigail in the same way you couldn’t for yourself?”

It feels itchy, too close to the bone, but when Will turns away Hannibal easily gentles him. “She is your daughter now, Will, and if she asked you, would you earn her forgiveness?”

The oblique circumstances between Will and Abigail turn together like opposing magnet poles, pushing one another and wavering in his mind. They push, and push, until suddenly, the attracting poles are within range and they snap together. Fear, and understanding, under the great sorrow.

“Yes,” he says immediately. “If she asked.”

“She has two new fathers now.” Tone coaxing, and gentle, Hannibal cups Will’s jaw. Will is shamed by how good it feels. “You may seek your own prophecy, if you so wish, Will. Poor men do not make poor fathers. Good men do not make good fathers. You have the capacity to be anything in between.”

“She barely knows me, I killed her father, and I am not fit-”

“She will know you. And you will be fit.” 

“She’s not me.”

“She has an advantage over you. Someone made the choice for her that no one made for you. To free her. To spare her from her father’s sins.”

The way he speaks, it’s as if Hannibal is offering Abigail to him as some kind of gift. Will instinctively shies from the removal of such autonomy, the way he always shied from the toilet stall confessional. Keep your whites white. 

“If she wants a friend, or a guardian, in either of us,” Will corrects gently, “then we’ll be lucky indeed. I won’t ask for her forgiveness. It’s too big a thing to ask. It  _ has _ to be freely given.”

Unperturbed, Hannibal only smiles, his beautiful, marble features made soft by it. “And in turn, she will be lucky to choose you, Will. Both of us.”

“Such modesty, Doctor.”

“I know what I have to offer. Do you think me  unequal to the task?”

“On the contrary.” Will looks into his face, so close now. “I find you intimidatingly capable. No ask too large.”

“Not many. May I ask something of you, though, Will?”

“You may.”

“Will you allow me to give you something?”

“Give me something?”

“Yes. You are so reluctant to ask, you prefer to simply accept what is being offered, gratefully, too. Can I give you something, and trust that you will only accept it if you truly want it? Call it pain relief, if it’s easier.”

That alone makes it plain what he wants. It stuns Will for a moment, nearly to alarm, but then Hannibal tilts his head and Will realizes that he wants to say yes. He’s wanted it for weeks, an ache like this foreignness in his belly today.

“Pain relief,” he repeats, nearly laughing. 

“Is that too much to ask? If it is, you only need say.”

“It is of you.”

“You’re not asking. I am. If you want it, I can guarantee no strings attached. All you need say is yes.”

He does want it. Admitting it to himself is easy enough, after everything. Admitting it to Hannibal won’t be hard, either.

It is hard to say yes, though, so Will just nods. Hannibal is so close, and his body is warm and sturdy, and when he pulls Will in, he accepts it. 

The kiss is not sweet, but it’s cherishing. Deep and tidal in its easy push and pull, easy laps of tongues that quickly become a fractious confluence. Their hands move, grasping in fabric, framing jaws, constantly in motion.

Hannibal’s lips are pinked when they part, his hair slightly disheveled from Will’s passing hands. Will takes in his features up close, serene and yet moved, and he has to pull him down again; let their bodies press flush. He’s so aware of Hannibal’s fingers traversing his skin, anchoring him close. Their kisses are becoming keener, careless,the grain of their cheeks catching as they orient for new sweeps of tongues and lips. Will is sure, somewhere quiet in the back of his mind, that this is positive reinforcement of some kind. A gift, in exchange for a secret. 

Hannibal is dedicated to this lesson. He breaks the kiss only to smear his lips down the column of Will’s throat, painting lines of adoration like the red crayon dashes on a childhood treasure map.  _ X marks the spot.  _

Their lips rejoin, and Will has to push at his pristine suit jacket until it falls onto a nearby chair; get underneath and feel the terrain of Hannibal’s muscles and bones under his fine shirt. Kissing like this, with abandon, and intent, it’s joyous. Will has no need to force down the ingrown fear of explaining himself later down the line: Hannibal knows. Hannibal understands. He  _ wants _ Will, with such fervor that they’re moving on the spot under the force of it, bodies weaving to find the perfect position to press and hold. 

Their unbalance finds Will backed against the kitchen counter. With barely a breath of effort, Hannibal lifts him up onto it. He steps into the circle of Will’s thighs when he nudges him in with his feet; seeks out the plush press of his mouth with his own. 

“This is what you wanted to give me?” Will breathes, thoughts only slightly hindered by Hannibal’s teeth gently tugging his lower lip. 

“I want to give you many things. Acceptance seemed the most tangible.”

“You show everyone acceptance like this?”

Half a laugh at that. “Would you rather I reverted to more traditional methods?”

“God no.”

“I thought not.” Blond lashes shading dark eyes, Hannibal presses in once more. His hands are a gentle weight, letting Will’s shoulders ratchet down to nearly relaxed. He’s pressing closer, so their bodies touch at every possible point. 

When his hands slip down to the soft sweatpants Will wears, it’s shockingly easy to lift up on his hands; let Hannibal strip them down Will’s thighs and onto the floor. 

“Will,” he murmurs, with one big hand smoothing up his spine, under the thin, damp fabric of his t-shirt. The other follows the muscle of his thigh. “Let me show you.”

Wordlessly panting, Will follows him to the bed. He sees Hannibal taking in the rumpled state of it in the cluttered space, the spot of blood on the sheets. He inhales, and then looks to the small mirror on the window ledge, partially obscured by the curtain. It’s plain glass, about a foot tall, rarely used. Still, Hannibal gives it unearned study for a few long seconds, before flicking back the blankets and sitting comfortably on Will’s bed. He’s on the edge of the mattress, facing the larger window. He leans forward only to adjust the mirror’s angle slightly, before he gestures Will closer.

“Sit between my knees.”

“Hannibal…”

“Please. Indulge me.”

It seems pointless to draw a line in the sand in the wake of a landslide. With a mental shrug, Will goes to him, and allows himself to be stiffly positioned between his thighs on the mattress edge. Despite his own awkwardness, he feels greedy for the sudden glut of contact: Hannibal’s body is a feast for Will’s tactile senses even through their clothes, and he closes his eyes to let himself decipher the secrets it tells in turn. A very faint tremor in Hannibal’s hands, nearly clutching when he spreads both against Will’s belly, and a shock of heat against the seat of Will’s boxers. He’s enjoying this. 

Experimentally, Will shifts, body arching when Hannibal’s fingers trail up to his throat. Suddenly his breath is hot against Will’s ear, sending electricity pirouetting through his nerves. 

“Do you trust me, Will?” His other hand still grounded against Will’s lower belly, they’re touching in more places than Will can name. The fabric of Hannibal’s slacks is soft against Will’s bare legs, and his toes touch the cool leather of Hannibal’s shoes when he scrambles for purchase to bracket into the press of his hands.

“Yes,” he says quickly. It’s undeniably true, even with Will’s limited capacity for trust. 

“Thank you,” Hannibal answers. He lips at Will’s skin then, more of those maddening kisses, nearly biting. 

Every touch has Will squirming. He can hear himself panting, sub-vocal, and he’s so aware of it all. Hannibal smells of winter, and faintly of wine and saffron. Will can’t resist reaching over his shoulder to touch the silk of his silvering hair, slipping through the grain of the stubble on Will’s jaw. Every aspect of him feels like they’re feasting on one another with touch. He had never considered Hannibal could stomach him, before. 

Will himself has appetite enough for two. He pleads wordlessly when Hannibal strokes up under his t-shirt, still driving Will to tremors with his kisses. His fingers are so gentle as they search through the dark hair low on Will’s stomach, then up, along the divots of striven-for muscle, to the place where one long scar cuts horizontally across Will’s chest. 

It makes him instinctively flinch, but Hannibal murmurs a gentle encouragement against his ear. 

“Look in the mirror, Will. Look at yourself. See the way I see you.”

Railing against the unwillingness, Will opens one eye. The mirror only reflects this one small window, their faces and throats, but the Polaroid of it is enough to show Will the plain yearning on Hannibal’s face.

Slowly, Hannibal’s hand slides back down Will’s body. He’s careful, nearly hesitant, and it’s Will who arches up to meet him when he cups the heel of his palm against Will’s mons through his shorts. In the mirror, Will fleetingly sees the need flash through both of them. 

“Hannibal…” he’s not sure what he’s pleading for, but he gets it when Hannibal lets the heel of his palm gently grind at where Will is swollen hard. He can only feel the tease of it through the reinforced fabric of the shorts, but when he looks in the mirror, Hannibal’s expression is solicitous once again. 

“May I touch you, Will?” He murmurs. 

Their mouths are so close again that Will tastes the urgency in the words. As ever, he finds he can’t deny him. 

“I mean - I’m…”

“I know.”

“It will be -”

“I know.”

“You really want to?”

Impossible to avoid meeting his eyes in the mirror again. Hannibal is so genuine it forms a knot of gratitude in Will’s throat to see it.

“More than anything.”

Will is the first to look away, but he nods, and Hannibal wastes no time in tucking his hand into the front of the thick fabric to touch carefully over delicate flesh and dark curls. He exhales sharply against Will’s jaw at the first brush of their skin. 

“Oh, fuck…” Will isn’t sure if his own exclamation is more pleasure or horror, a combination that never seems far away when Hannibal is involved. He strokes Will with complete assurance, over the hot, slick swell of his cock, down low to where he’s wet and tender. 

It’s overwhelming and insufficient all at once. Will cups his pelvis forward to grant him more access, swallowing a moan when Hannibal strokes over his sex in firm circles, his knuckles stretching out the front of Will’s boxers, surely making a mess. 

“Hannibal…”

“Hush, let me please you.” Carefully, he kneads Will’s cock between his fingers, his breaths coming faster against Will’s throat. It’s enough to make Will grit his teeth. He holds in the moan, just grinding up into the squeeze of his knuckles. He’s getting wetter, needier. He’s so hard it nearly aches.

“More,” he pleads, practically bridging off the bed. Hannibal gives him it, keeping his palm grinding when he presses down and in with two broad fingers. “Fuck-!”

“Relax,” Hannibal implores, very gently, “take what you want.”

Will can hardly breathe, let alone relax, it’s too raw. So good it burns. He’s still so shaken from their conversation: Hannibal so easily teases out these startling revelations. Will never thought twice about giving them up; giving Hannibal all the little tendrils of pain that have kept him awake at night since he was eighteen. Hannibal is a vault, though, uncrackable unless you know the trick. He won’t be telling anyone Will’s secrets. 

It’s the same thing, giving him this intimacy. Alarmingly easy, to unburden himself of the politeness of  _ keeping it together.  _ It has Will thinking fleetingly of the toilet stall confessional once more. 

“Will…” Hannibal strokes his cock again, turning his hand to envelope the shaft between his thumb and forefinger and making short, fast passes with his fist. It’s a summoning touch: Will’s thoughts magnetize back to him with a crash of sensation.

“Oh god, fuck,  _ Hannibal. _ ”

With Hannibal’s other hand against his throat, Will is completely supported by his body, and he lets himself press back into that solid foundation as much as he dares. He’s got one hand in Hannibal’s hair still, knuckles white, the other restlessly clenching in the knee of those smooth slacks. Hannibal takes it, and gives him what he needs. Will knows instinctively that he delights entirely in doing so. Evidence in the snatches of their faces in the mirror is just a bonus. 

Sex is one of the only things Will has ever found it easy to lose himself in, despite his general ambivalence toward it. It’s easy to lose himself now, with Hannibal panting into his throat as he works him off. The arousal he feels from this contact alone is evident when Will wriggles back against him, but Hannibal doesn’t rock forward, nor pull Will to him. His focus is on Will, and  _ his _ pleasure alone; relieving him of the ache that has followed him all day, physical and otherwise. 

“So good,” Will slurs gratefully, tugging on his handful of hair so that their lips catch. Their mutual gasps interrupt the kiss frequently, and Will’s tensing thighs and arching back make staying still nearly impossible after a few moments. “Oh - fuck, fuck -”

He doesn’t think he imagines the curl of amusement at the corner of Hannibal’s mouth when he slips his fingers down to his cunt again. Will’s grunt is half relief, half dismay, but pleasure soon regains ground with a few deep rocks of Hannibal’s fingers. 

“Look at yourself for me, Will.” It’s the note of pleading in Hannibal’s voice that has Will obeying. He looks at the little tile of reflected light, and sees them picked out in the half dark of the green room. “Look at what a perfect specimen you are. You rent yourself from the fabric of expectation. Fashioned something more like armor. The strength you have is greater than any Grecian hero. Look now, and see yourself as I do.”

Breathless, dumb with that ecstasy rising like floodwater, Will keeps looking. 

In the black dusk, his curls and beard are made jet by the shadows, his larynx more pronounced. He’s hard lines and square jaw, the glimpse of his body showing his raised muscles. The shadow of Hannibal’s hand, tenting the front of his dark boxers.

Even knowing what he’s supposed to be seeing, Will’s eyes slide back to him. Hannibal is glorious around him, a flush cresting his high cheekbones, the unkempt sweep of hair in his eyes making him appear soft. Lips shell pink and luscious from kissing, his lashes glowing in the lamplight. 

“You,” Will chokes, but no other words seem to come.

“How does it feel, Will?” 

It seems like a deliberate distraction technique. Will focuses once again on the motions of his hand and finds himself incubating that familiar heat, itching between his hips like a fuse lit. He’s helpless for the effortlessly competent way Hannibal fucks him, and they both know it. 

“Close,” he admits shakily, “good, fuck, so perfect. Feel like you were meant to be here.”

It’s too honest. Hannibal doesn’t say so; he angles his chin up instead, imploring for a kiss that Will gladly gives him.

It’s incomparable, the headiness of being held and known, Hannibal’s fingers driving inside him in smooth, rapturous motions, strumming the nerves that make Will’s back arch and toes curl. He cries out against Hannibal’s lips, hips shifting restlessly.

“That’s it, Will. Good boy.”

Such easy praise, sinking into the choral tune of Will’s hazy want like a harmony. It’s the sweetest undertone he could imagine, acceptance without expectation. And Hannibal is  _ good _ , deliciously rough. His palm is squeezing on Will’s throat now, his breaths ragged and fingers sinking in faster, deeper. 

A long, low moan rips out of Will before he can restrain it. He’s so close. 

His hand slipping up, Hannibal switches back to working his cock, those perfect lips quirking in a near snarl with the effort. He doesn’t take his eyes off Will, fist tight and pumping in quick, relentless pulls. 

Every muscle in him contracting, Will feels the elastic string of pleasure drawn taut, his jaw dropping. 

“Perfect boy,” Hannibal praises. For an instant, that same dark greed flashes in the reflection of his face. “Let me see.”

The levee breaks, and Will comes with a torrent of sensation and a shaking cry. It’s deafening, nearly painful in its intensity, unrelenting for several endless seconds until Will’s knees give out and he slumps back into Hannibal’s body like a doll. 

“Oh god,” he breathes, shying from the last few lazy strokes. His breaths tremor, his pulse loud in his ears. Every nerve in his body tingles. “Hannibal…”

His incoherence must be notable, because Hannibal chuckles softly against his hair. His hands stay where they are, nearly possessive. Will doesn’t mind. 

“Pain relief,” he echoes. “You weren’t kidding.”

“Glad to hear it.”

When Will looks up, Hannibal’s smile is warm and genuine. He doesn’t seem to have any concerns about Will sprawling against him.

“Do you want-?”

“No,” Hannibal interrupts gently, “not this time. Today was about you, Will.”

His tone doesn’t brook an argument, but Will doesn’t get the feeling that Hannibal wants to be convinced. 

“Next time,” Will agrees, and accepts another lingering kiss. 

They breathe together for a moment after they part, faces still angled close. Will focuses on Hannibal’s red mouth, and finally lets his hands relax. 

“Do you need anything else?” Hannibal asks softly. When Will hesitates, a slight squeeze gentles his brief tension. “If the answer is ‘to be alone’, that is understandable, Will.”

“Seems heartless,” Will whispers, “you brought me dinner, and…”

“Not things designed to instill you with a sense of obligation. Let me clean up, and I will leave you to gather your thoughts.”

“You really don’t mind?”

“Not at all.” He’s genuine, and Will doesn’t think he’s imagining the slight relief he sees, either.

At his nod, Hannibal carefully slides out from behind Will, straightening himself with one hand, not bothering to hide the way this last few minutes has affected him.

“May I use your washroom?”

“Upstairs, first door.”

Will notes with gratitude that Hannibal spares him the mortification of seeing the state of his unclean hand, but in the mirror, he sees a glimpse of something else instead: Hannibal’s head bowing as he walks, and the raising of his hand to his face. 

A few beats of stunned mental silence pass. Will looks to the dogs, scattered about on their beds, blissfully unaware of his mental wrestling. He shakes his head: he’s overwrought, and it was probably just the angle. 

Still, the thought lingers until Hannibal comes back downstairs, nearly as put together as he was when he arrived. Dazed by his orgasm and somewhat occupied by his need to shower, Will just watches from the bed as Hannibal clears away their abandoned plates, leaving the remains of the soup in the fridge, and then washing the rest of the crockery.

“I can do that,” Will puts in, feebly.

“It’s not a problem.” 

It should be awkward, but that’s not precisely what Will feels, watching the demure angle of Hannibal’s soft jaw from his position behind him. He can’t stop thinking of that black glint he’d seen in Hannibal’s eyes, and the way he’d raised bloody fingers to his lips. 

Nevertheless, he’s helpless for the rush of pleasure he feels at the sight of him, shrugging back into his pristine jacket, rearranging his cuffs. He stands expectantly at the door, and Will finally goes to him, loitering with near-shyness on the threshold of affection.

“Are you all right?” Hannibal asks him gently. “I think perhaps I have put you through your mental paces today.”

“This was different,” Will says, shrugging one shoulder up. “Usually we talk about the deaths of strangers.”

“Today we talked about the deaths of strangers, too. Would you humor me a few moments longer?”

“I suppose so, but only because my pain relief hasn’t worn off yet.”

A bright smile at that. Will sees a difference in it already, something in Hannibal subtly softened by the evening’s happenings. Will thinks perhaps Hannibal is more pleased with the development than he’d have Will believe. 

“So often, you struggle to come back to yourself, your thoughts snared on the barbed minds of killers. Did you ever lose yourself in reconstructing your mother’s murder, Will? Did you dream of being your father, killing her in your kitchen?”

Will hesitates, and Hannibal’s triumph is nearly a scent in the air. 

“Do you dream of being your mother?” He whispers.

“I used to. Not anymore.”

“Not now you are Achilles,” Hannibal confirms. “What is your weakness?”

“Tell you mine if you tell me yours.”

Hannibal looks thoughtful at that. “Perhaps something we should discuss in our next session.”

“Can’t wait.”

Collecting his things together, Hannibal opens the doors, hesitating before Will. 

“Call me if you need anything at all, won’t you?” It’s an unusually informal offer, but then again, this is an unusually informal situation.

“Of course. Thank you.” Will itches the back of his neck. He lingers on his impulse a split-second longer, and then leans in. Hannibal is blessedly receptive to the kiss, his smile tasting of opportunity. 

“Come for dinner again soon, all right?” Will murmurs. “Next time I’ll provide the pain relief.”

“I very much look forward to being anesthetized,” Hannibal assures him. He holds Will’s gaze until he knows he means it. 

One more kiss, and then he’s gone, a slender black shape against the gloaming. Will watches the Bentley pull away with something gnawing in the pit of his belly. 

In the tall grass, a figure catches the glint of the headlights through the window, and Will’s gaze snags on it, his brows furrowing. For an instant, the grass seems to become waves again, blown into wild peaks by the wind. Among them, a little girl pitches and bobs, and then vanishes as Hannibal turns onto the road.

  
  
  
  



End file.
